Joe McKinnon Video on AFFR Redistricting Plan

The Redistricting Board is trying to find a plan that will meet both the Alaska constitutional requirements and the Voting Rights Act (VRA) requirements. The initial plan they drew up did get pre-clearance from the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the VRA, but there were districts that didn't meet constitutional standards. The VRA takes precedence over the Alaska Constitution, but if there must be violations of the constitutional standards, they must be minimal.

The Supreme Court said they couldn't evaluate the Board's submitted plan because they had no benchmark against which to measure whether the constitutional violations were the least they could be. So now the board is doing what it can to develop a new plan. They are having trouble getting to one.

 Meanwhile, I know, from talking to people at the board meetings, that there are at least three groups that have developed plans:

•  Calista has submitted one or two plans. 
• The Rights Coaliton (a group which includes the Democratic Party) has submitted a plan. 
• AFFR (Alaskans For Fair Redistricting made up of union and Native Corporations) 

In the video below, Joe McKinnon talks about the AFFR plan.  I've looked at the plan since we made the video and I need Joe to show me the third Native Senate seat.  It's hard to evaluate the constitutionality from the page size maps, but the compactness and contiguity seem to be ok for the larger districts.  For the smaller districts, there's not enough detail to know. 











Joe expresses some concern about the process - the lack of interest expressed by the board for third party plans.